South Beach: "Paradise" and reality. (Essay).

Forrest, David W.

A LONG with its rapid redevelopment over the past ten years, South Beach has become a culturally significant place for gay men from all over the U.S. and Europe, a "gay paradise" where beautiful bodies and overt sexuality are as significant a part of the landscape as the warm weather, the beach, and the lollipop-colored Art. Deco buildings. Although many residents and visitors see South Beach as such a paradise, the high rate of HIV infection among gay men--about 25 percent according to recent studies--is an underlying reality of the area, as HIV-prevention activists frequently point Out. These conflicting interpretations of the nature of South Beach radiate out into conflicts over the meaning of local social interactions, the body, and sex. These conflicts, in turn, often hamper HIV prevention efforts in the community.

A METHOD OF ANALYSIS

One way to examine this situation is to apply an "anthropology of landscape" approach to South Beach, which can provide insight into how local residents view their community, and how this understanding can be used as a lens to help see an "insider's view" of local HIV-prevention efforts. This clarified view can then be used to help create more culturally appropriate HIV prevention for the community. Recent studies in the anthropology of landscapes have sought to address some of the questions surrounding the opening of this new black box of cultural analysis.

In the process of creating a landscape, local people create a metaphorical link between what Hirsch and O'Hanlon (1995) call the "foreground" of everyday life and the "background" of the beyond-the-everyday, as people use language and concepts appropriate to one domain as a means of achieving insight into the nature of the other. This is done as people bring elements of the beyond-the-everyday into the everyday in both the physical environment and in the narratives about this space. These metaphors are often alluded to indirectly by the use of metonyms, which are conventional symbols in the landscape that stand for entities in the world as defined by the metaphor. By alluding to these metaphors in their daily lives, the people of the community advocate, contest, and negotiate competing discourses which structure the meaning of that place, their actions and their place within the community. The landscape provides a greater understanding of both the foreground of daily life and the background of the beyond-the- everyday through a process of "mutual implication" in which the foreground (daily life) and the background (paradise) inform each other.

With this in mind, landscapes are not only inscribed in physical spaces but are also created in the narratives about a place, in the ways that people talk about, think about, and portray a place. My experience in Miami while working with an HIV sero-prevalence and risk behavior study, as a consultant on a local oral history project, and as a local resident has given me many different accounts of the nature of the landscape of South Beach, and an understanding of how competing discourses are embodied in the landscape and how the landscape serves as a tool in the competition among these discourses.

THE "PARADISE" METAPHOR

One of the most prevalent local views of South Beach is that of a "gay paradise," a place of escape from everyday reality, an unreal place--an image that's inscribed not only on the physical landscape, but also on the community's narratives about itself, which are reflected in the language people use to talk about South Beach, in movies and other visual media, in ads for bars and clubs, and in the well-muscled bodies and "tribal" tattoos of the inhabitants. These metaphorical links between South Beach and "paradise" have deep implications for local interpretations of the nature of the gay community, the body, and the practice of sex. And there's no denying the reality of SoBe's leisurely lifestyle, beautiful bodies, and heightened sexuality. This metaphor of South Beach as a gay paradise is continually invoked in the conversations of local residents and visitors, as well as in the narratives of the local bar rags and lifestyle guides.

The concept of paradise as a place of sexual openness and freedom is informed by a long history of European representations of this ancient concept. From the 18th-century voyages of Captain Cook in the South Pacific to the paintings of Paul Gauguin a century ago, Europeans have been fascinated by views of a tropical paradise where beauty and sex were a natural part of the landscape. The application of this metaphor to South Beach actually began long before the gay community established itself there. The original "paradise" was created in the 1920's and 30's when "snowbirds" from northern cities began flocking to this area of Miami Beach for the winter. In its heyday, South Beach became an urban resort landscape, one of the most densely populated oceanfront spaces on the East Coast. (The one-mile-square district is one of the largest historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places, and also one of the most recently built.)

By the early 1980's, however, after decades of decline, South Beach was a paradise lost--a district of dilapidated Art Deco hotels and apartments that housed working-class retirees and Cuban refugees who had arrived on the Mariel Boat Lift in 1980 or thereafter. It was in the mid-1980's that gay men from New York and other northeastern cities began to arrive in South Beach, attracted by the architecture, the beachfront location, and the warm climate. The existing infrastructure of residential space was perfect for creating a specifically gay paradise. Within walking distance of the beach, the small studio apartments, built as seasonal housing in the 1920's and 30's, were ideal places for single gay men to live.

They came to South Beach not only to escape the cold, but also to escape the effects of the AIDS epidemic. The development of treatments to combat the opportunistic infections caused by AIDS started to prolong the lives of many HIV-positive gay men starting in the mid-1980's. For those healthy enough to move, South Beach became a place of escape from the devastation that was raging in the gay communities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities. As one man told me, "In 1989 I was living in New York and at a low point in my life. Many people I had known had died of AIDS, and with fewer and fewer friends left, it was not so hard to leave. A lot of people in New York were buying apartments here in South Beach, and so I moved. It was another world from New York. It was still pretty dead, but I stuck it out. The weather was nice, it was pretty, and the environment was easy on the immune system."

By the early 1990's, the physical landscape of South Beach had been sufficiently upgraded by these early pioneers to attract a new wave of gay migrants, and was earning a reputation as a fashionable international hot spot. An article in New York magazine (January 13, 1992) dubbed the area "Soho in the Sun," and went on to observe: "Some are drawn to South Beach by the Deco and the drugs and the boys and the beach and the proximity to European and South American glamour and wealth." By this time, the gay community was burgeoning. As Tim Barnum, a prominent resident of South Beach, put it in an interview, "God said, 'Let there be a new playground."' The metaphor of South Beach as a gay paradise was now firmly established.

Then and now, the view of South Beach as paradise has also had important implications for the way in which the body is conceptualized. Any place called "paradise" would have to have perfect bodies (or at least beautiful ones). A daily workout at the gym is part of the daily routine, and the musculature of one's body is often the standard by which a person measures himself and others. Where else in a community of 30,000 could 5,000 working models blend so easily into the general population? Anabolic steroids, prescribed to many HIV-positive men to combat "wasting," also has the effect of promoting muscular development. The use and abuse of steroids, although by no means unique to South Beach or to gay men, is common in this community and helps fuel the heightened body consciousness and muscle fetishism that characterize the local gay culture.

From the beginning of its development as a gay community, sex has been intrinsic to local narratives about South Beach. Ads for local bars and clubs make liberal use of the many well-muscled men of the community to promote their reputation as a place where beautiful men can be found. Some local "private" parties even include a "remove-the-shirt" check at the door, ensuring that only the best bodies will get in. Because of its renown as a gay paradise and its sexually charged atmosphere, South Beach has been the location for a number of gay porn movies, and the actors and the locations where the fantasy sex occurred can be seen every day. This is particularly impressive considering that all of this is concentrated in a community barely ten blocks by twenty blocks in area.

The image of South Beach as a place where only the beautiful and healthy abide--a place unspoiled by the ravages of plague--was reinforced by the fact that HIV-positive men tended to leave South Beach when they began to develop symptoms of full-blown AIDS. As one man told me, "When people went from being HIV-positive to having full-blown AIDS, they went back north to die. This created the illusion that there was not a problem here. Down here, everybody would get a tan, use steroids, look fabulous. Then when they got sick, they would go back to New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey, or wherever they came from."

CONSEQUENCES FOR HIV PREVENTION

In contrast to the view of South Beach as gay paradise, HIV prevention activists are more likely to define the community as an epicenter of the epidemic. Recent studies suggest that about 25 percent of gay men eighteen and older in South Beach are HIV-positive--about sixteen percent of those eighteen to 29, and 38 percent of those thirty and above (Darrow, 1996). These activists continue to sound the alarm that South Beach is "killing itself" through continued infection. But in doing so they find themselves running headlong into a powerful community narrative about the essential nature of this place as a gay paradise.

Local activists lament that, in contrast to the residents of other large gay communities, those in South Beach do little to participate in HIV-prevention efforts--except perhaps to attend "circuit parties" held as HIV fundraising events. This lack of involvement frustrates and puzzles many HIV prevention advocates, who see the rate of infection as cause for community mobilization. They need to recognize the extent to which a desire to escape the effects of AIDS in other communities was (and is) at the very core of South Beach's redevelopment. The lack of community involvement is due in part to the nature of South Beach as a place of escape. In addition, many gay men have lived in South Beach for only a year or so or live there seasonally, and for this reason take little interest in local problems. (A 1996 study found that the average length of residence for people currently residing in South Beach was eighteen months, and few had lived there for over five years.) Especially for these seasonal residents and vi sitors, the metaphor of South Beach as a gay paradise tends to overwhelm any more earthly image of the place.

The HIV-prevention community also runs up against the ubiquitous images of muscled bodies and narratives about the beauty and desirability of the men of South Beach. Messages about HIV prevention only serve to alienate the many gay men who moved here to escape the devastation of AIDS back home. This is even more the case with visitors, who come to SoBe to escape the responsibilities and cares of their workaday lives. For HIV-positive gay men who came to South Beach to start over and live out the last years of their lives and for the vacationers who come here to "live it up" for a while, the facts about HIV prevention that they knew perfectly well back home somehow get lost against the background of "paradise." This background metaphor in turn is continually reinforced by the beautiful bodies, warm weather, and an active nightlife, which interact to produce a highly charged sexual atmosphere. As in other communities, these narratives help to guide people in creating models for behavior.

Local efforts at HIV prevention try to take the sexually charged nature of the community into account when crafting HIV-prevention messages, attempting to negotiate local meanings by making use of familiar imagery in safer-sex messages. But most campaigns take a more antagonistic stance, appealing to fear, a tactic that breeds only resistance in a populace that wants to believe it's living in paradise. My contention is that effective approaches to HIV prevention must work with the dominant local metaphor of South Beach. The local HIV prevention community should strive not to contest, but rather to negotiate the meaning of the community as part of their efforts to change local norms and behavior.

REFERENCES

Darrow, W. "Preliminary Results of South Beach Health Survey." Florida International University News Release, December 15, 1996.

Hirsch, E. and M. O'Hanlon, eds. The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space. Oxford University Press, 1995.

Patron, E. "Will success kill South Beach?" OUT magazine, May 1999.

Special thanks for Jaclyn Jeffrey for her comments on an earlier version of this paper:

David W. Forrest, Ph.D., formerly the head of the Miami-Young Men's Survey, works as a research consultant in Miami.